Living Outside The Box

The reason to do all this is about working to pioneer new methods to save the world - one ocean plankton bloom, one forest, not one discovery at a time. All at once.
This blog and my lifes work is dedicated to my 3 children and 2 grandchildren and yours too...and to mysteries of nature some discovered most not.

International Space Station Study Confirms Plankton Survive When Exposed To Space.

The truth is we are simply an unintended consequence of the true space plankton masters of the universe that have been aquaforming blue planets.

We are more like something the cat dragged in, though plankton are generous hosts and we’ve been made welcome.

In a long-term experiment on the International Space Station, scientists from the German biology research institute ‘Fraunhofer’ placed living algae, aka plankton, on the outside of the space station exposed to the vacuum, cold, and intense radiation of space for nearly 2 years. The result of the two years of what was believed would be lethal to any form of earthly life proved just the opposite and is captured in a quote from the space plankton. Read the Fraunhofer Institute press release here.

When the space plankton that are even less hardy than the pico-plankton being ridden by the little prince above were asked what they thought of the rigors of living unprotected in space.

They said simply, “Meh, nothing to it.”

Click to read of an earlier discovery of plankton in space.

This is stunning science that goes well with the long standing concept of panspermia. The spreading of life throughout the universe by life forms highly adept at space travel and very very patient.

Many different ‘space plankton, from participating partners in the experiment, were all mounted in such trays and then exposed to the hostile environment of space on the outside of the ISS. After their return from the ISS almost all samples developed into healthy new populations.

They’re alive!

The hardy algae/plankton survived months on the exterior of the International Space Station ISS despite extreme temperature fluctuations and the vacuum of space as well as considerable UV and cosmic radiation. That was the astonishing result of an experiment conducted by Dr. Thomas Leya at the Fraunhofer Institute for Cell Therapy and Immunology IZI in Potsdam in cooperation with German and international partners.

Not always so easy to get along with. Surface plankton responsible for past mass extinctions – click to read more

Confirming the ocean pasture plankton as the most powerful force of Nature on this blue planet. Scientists have discovered the cause of a mass extinctions of sea-floor marine organisms 800,000 years ago.

In another new study published in the journal Nature Communications, scientists from the universities of Nottingham and Durham and the British Geological Survey (BGS), have revealed the cause of a mass extinction within marine plankton ecosystems.

Back to how we now know that Plankton are God, or at least the major life form on and running this blue planet.

This experiment is part of the large-scale Biology and Mars Experiment (BIOMEX), a project coordinated by Dr. Jean-Pierre de Vera at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Berlin. Dr. Leya himself had isolated the green algal strain of Sphaerocystis sp. from the waters of Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago, and prepared it together with the cyanobacterium Nostoc sp., a blue-green alga from Antarctica.

Dr. Leya heads the Extremophile Research & Biobank Cryo Working Group at Fraunhofer’s Bioanalytics and Bioprocesses IZI-BB branch in Potsdam. For the past 18 years, the group has been studying the survival strategies of cryophilic algae, cyanobacteria, mosses, fungi and bacteria found in polar regions. Researchers had already ascertained in the laboratory that algae are largely unsusceptible to long-term desiccation stress, extreme temperatures or UV radiation. Yet the extreme conditions of near-Earth orbit could not be fully simulated in labs, hence these algal specimens were recruited as astronauts/cosmonauts.

Space plankton cosmonaut accommodations on the International Space Station

A Russian Progress spacecraft transported the tiny Cosmonauts into space on July 23, 2014, and a more luxurious Soyuz capsule returned the algal Cosmonauts to Earth after what was thought to have been their deadly ordeal. All in all, they had to endure some 16 months on the outside of the ISS – with only neutral-density filters reducing the effects of radiation. Sensors measured and logged temperature changes and amounts of cosmic radiation.

After their return from the ISS almost all samples developed into new populations. The green alga also developed orange-coloured resting stages, whilst typically blue-green pigmented colonies were developed by the cyanobacterium.

Of the many varieties of plankton cosmonauts placed on the outside of the International Space Station only one failed to revive following long exposure to the rigors of space.

Of the various cosmonauts of green-alga strains only one specimen did not survive its space flight. The various specimens of green-alga strain simply again grew immediately into new healthy populations after gliding in low-Earth orbit for 450 days on the outside of the ISS.

Next Stop Mars

Researchers will now scrutinize the adaptation strategies of the blue and green algae cosmonauts. The research might help we humans better adapt to space life for example life on Mars which seems to be a persistent human fantasy. UV radiation that is intense on the surface of Mars damages human DNA when exposed to the sunlight of Mars. Perhaps a new gene for resistance to UV radiation might be found and after all humans and algae already share an enormous number of common genes so we might be able to add a UV resistance gene to our own DNA.

Panspermia Potential Proven, it’s in our human mythology, a fact you would know if you have read “La Petite Prince” to your children!

These findings that planktonic life can survive the rigors of space are significant in so many ways but the Mars mission fantasy is one where we can use the plankton skill set. The production of food on Mars would be essential for survival, should people colonize the Red Planet in the distant future. Algae produce oxygen and proteins, making them a good source of food; particularly hardy strains could be grown in special greenhouses or they might just simply be able to survive just fine on their own with just a little seeding effort in the right Martian ecosystems.

Our blue planet is in the Goldilock’s zone for life as plankton keep us cool and not toooo hot! Click to read more

Of course the big question is whether these hardy Cosmonauts are responsible for bring life to our blue planet billions of years ago. Clearly these guys and gals might have easily managed space travel and reached Earth via asteroid and comets. This theory of panspermia, as it is known, might experience a revival thanks to the ISS algae experiments.
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Something important the plankton landlords have to say about our treatment of their aquaformed world!

Dear Human tenants,

While you are welcome to take this as a just a suggestion we hope for your sake you take our words to heart. Beginning more than 600 hundred million years ago and for hundreds of millions of years our kind we plankton have bloomed upon this wonderful blue planet. We have harvested CO2 from the atmosphere and stored energy from the sun in our oily bodies. We have sunk to the sea floor and become part of the rock and foundation of this small blue world. As a sideline we have created enough oxygen for higher life forms, including man, to evolve. We didn’t have to do this but we love company.

OK perhaps ONE BIG MISTAKE was never expecting you humans to rob our plankton graves and burn all that stored fossil energy as fuel in your infernal machines in one micro-second of evolutionary time, belching hundreds of billions of tonnes of CO2 back into the air so fast and furiously, it is now decimating plankton and other marine life and turning the living seas to acid. So we all make mistakes, here is a plan to fix the mess so pay careful attention! (OK we admit part of the problem is that we love your CO2 like your kids love sweet drinks, but as tasty as it is it’s ultimately our demise.)

Here’s a short music video we’ve produced for those whose time is short or fall into the short attention span league.

Attention humans of earth. We are the plants, phytoplankton, of the sea, the greatest life-sustaining force in your universe, and we are losing hope and patience fast. You are wantonly destroying our kin and your own survival chances as well. We produce most of the planet’s oxygen, devour over half it’s CO2, feed all ocean creatures, and are the greatest allies you’ve got on this blue planet. Yet you starve us of vital nutrients and scald us with toxic acid forming emissions, thereby decimating our numbers, starving the seas and trashing your climate, too.

This is criminal, senseless and suicidal behaviour and we demand that you cease at once, replenish and restore the vital mineral micro-nutrient dust we need to live – it’s a fact all we are is dust in the wind. Let us get back to work converting acid forming CO2 to our nutritious selves, restoring the ocean pastures, feeding all sea life and cleansing the skies for you. Want to read more just follow this link.

Want to do the right thing, just join our best friend, Russ and help him help us all.

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Interesting Snippets

"There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such trifling investment of fact." Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

"It's like religion. Heresy in science is thought of as a bad thing, whereas it should be just the opposite." - Thomas Gold

Unnamed Law: If it happens, it must be possible.

" If you steal from one person, well they call that plagarism. I steal from everyone, they call that research. - Woody Guthrie

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. - Arthur C. Clarke's First Law

It is through science that we prove, but through intuition that we discover. - H. Poincare

"Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature." - Michael Faraday

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. - Max Planck

Corollary: Science advances funeral by funeral.

A man with a new idea is a crank until he succeeds. - Mark Twain

Never attribute to conspiracy that which is adequately explained by stupidity. - R. George

Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are that good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats. - Howard Aiken

I am tired of all this sort of thing called science here ... We have spent millions in that sort of thing for the last few years, and it is time it should be stopped. - U.S. Senator Simon Cameron, on the Smithsonian Institute (1901)

The one who says it cannot be done should never interrupt the one who's doing it! The Roman Rule

"I never make predictions, especially about the future" - Casey Stengle